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| Charles Dimitroff, PhD |
Charles Dimitroff, PhD, of the Department of Dermatology, along with collaborators at Imperial College London, received a five-year, $2.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Cancer Institute (NCI) to support their project, “Analysis of Glycomic Regulators of Melanoma Progression.”
The award, an Alliance of Glycobiologists for Cancer Research: Biological Tumor Glycomics Laboratories (U01) grant, will support Dimitroff and his lab’s study of how carbohydrates on melanoma cells promote melanoma-cell survival and melanoma-cell spreading from the skin to distant tissues. His laboratory plans to study a unique carbohydrate structure on melanoma cells and how this structure accelerates the transition of primary melanomas in the skin to metastatic melanomas in distant tissues. Knowledge of how and when this transition will take place is critical because this process almost always bears a poor prognosis for melanoma patients.
Dimitroff’s lab, best known for its investigations on role of carbohydrates and immune cells in health and disease, also has a strong reputation in carbohydrates and cancer development, a field known as cancer glycobiology. Dimitroff hopes to develop this unique carbohydrate structure as a biomarker of melanoma progression. Having the ability to predict which primary melanomas are most likely to spread will help oncologists develop a more forward-thinking treatment approach.
The NIH is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and serves as the country’s largest medical research agency. The National Cancer Institute, a branch of the NIH, supports advancements in cancer research to promote healthier lives across the country.
